Deal on Senate vote on violence against women bill

Associated Press

April 26, 2012Updated: April 26, 2012 9:55pm

WASHINGTON — Senate leaders Thursday overcame the gender politics that had roiled debate over the government's main domestic-violence program and agreed to a vote on renewing it before heading home for a week's vacation.

Express Newsletters

Get the latest news, sports and food features sent directly to your inbox.

The Violence Against Women Act, approved and renewed unanimously in the past, for weeks had been the subject of haggling between the parties. Democrats accused Republicans of standing in the way engaging in a “war against women” — a phrase that is part of the Democrats' effort to protect their edge among women voters in this presidential and congressional election year.

Republicans denied they tried to block the renewal. They said they wanted to lower the cap for visas of abused immigrants, remove mentions of protecting gays, lesbians and transgender people, and change provisions protecting Native American women.

GOP lawmakers complained the changes were designed to distract voters from issues Democrats would rather not discuss, such as rising gas prices and the struggling economy.

“We face an abundance of hard choices,” said Arizona Sen. John McCain, the GOP's 2008 presidential nominee and a leading supporter of Republican hopeful Mitt Romney this year. “Divisive slogans and declaring of phony wars are intended to avoid those hard choices and to escape paying a political price for doing so.”

The law, enacted in 1994, has a history of bipartisan backing and has generally escaped controversy until now.

President Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats, eager to protect their wide lead among female voters, have tried to portray Republican stands on social policies from Medicaid to contraception as GOP attacks on women, who have accounted for the majority of voters in presidential election years and provided Obama's margin of victory in 2008.

Romney and other Republicans are betting men as well as women will have the economy on their mind in November and say the Democratic changes pushed for in the law's renewal are unnecessary.

Under the deal announced by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., the Senate planned votes on two Republican alternatives and one Democratic proposal; each was expected to fail.

The Democratic bill was then expected to pass by unanimous consent.

The Senate is out of session next week.

The main Republican alternative, sponsored by Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, would alter several Democratic provisions by:

Capping visas available to legal and illegal immigrants who suffer abuse at 10,000 a year, compared with 15,000 in the Democratic bill.

Permitting tribal authorities to go to federal court for protective orders on behalf of abused American Indian women. The Democratic bill would expand the power of tribal officials to handle cases of abuse of Indian women by non-Indians.

House Republicans are drafting a bill that would be close to the Grassley-Hutchison approach.